Reality is Strange
by ally.enchantress
Summary: Olivia and Elliot are chilling in a bar when Olivia does something completely out of character. The title blows.


**I came up with this in literally two minutes, because when the urge comes I must obey. So, I tried to get my point across and keep things as in-character as possible. It's short and to the point, and I'm sorry if it sucks. Sorry about the title, too. I didn't want to call it: Untitled. That just doesn't go with my sense of moral responsibilities.**

**Disclaimer: If I owned SVU, none of my words would be up here. Instead, they would be spoken by the best actors in the world in future episodes. In short: if I owned it, this would be an episode, not a fanfic.**

**____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________**

Drink in hand, Olivia sat at the bar and looked at the civilians surrounding her. They were drinking away their worries, just like she wanted to do.

Elliot, beside her, was watching her carefully. He knew her thoughts were on Hailey because that's where his were. What surprised him was that she'd suddenly pulled out her notebook, which was still stuffed with everything she'd recorded from their most recent interviews. He watched her take a pencil and start writing.

Her pencil scratched with a frenzy, anger and passion mingling as she scribbled away. She didn't even know quite what she was doing, just that words were forming in her head and she had to save them before they left her. It was like she was on autopilot. Her hand seemed to move on its own accord with no help from her brain at all.

She ran out of room on the page and flipped it over to the back, not even noticing the strange format she'd written her impromptu diary entry in.

When she finished, she threw down the pencil with absolutely no grace whatsoever and took her first look at what she'd written. Elliot read over her shoulder, and she made no attempt to stop him.

What in the world was this?

_The voices around me  
__Spout trivial stuff  
__Like sports and guitars  
__And videogame fluff_

_And I always seem to wonder_

_Do these people care  
__About death and decay  
__Do they pay attention  
__To how children play_

_How can they speak  
__When others can't hear  
__And why do they laugh  
__When their soldiers feel fear_

_They all seem so oblivious_

_Can they justify whining  
__While children sob  
__Will they pity themselves  
__When some don't have a job_

_The beautiful world  
__Is all that they see  
__While other people  
__Would say differently_

_And nobody seems to care_

_So why do we pay  
__For such luxuries  
__When children in India  
__Battle morbid disease_

_Because everyone here  
__Though they hear it a lot  
__Assume nothing is going to get better  
__It's not_

Neither Elliot nor Olivia said anything when they'd finished reading at the exact same time. Elliot was completely fascinated, and Olivia was utterly bewildered. Who had written this? She couldn't write a poem to save her life, much less make it sound good. She knew exactly where she'd gotten the idea, but the problem was that she'd actually taken a pencil and scratched the words down on paper without destroying the whole thing.

All she could think to say was, "Wow, we're such pessimists."

She started to read it again, and was surprised when Elliot picked up the pencil she'd dropped and stole the paper from her.

He scribbled something she couldn't see and handed it back to her. The poem had two more verses.

_When this isn't true  
__We can battle the storm  
__We can bring all the kids  
__From the cold to the warm_

_If we want we can do it  
__We but need to keep trying  
__We can save the less lucky  
__We can stop all their crying._

Olivia grinned. "Happy ending," she said, her drink forgotten.

"Well you know," her partner teased, folding the poem and stuffing it in his shirt pocket, "I'm pretty optimistic for a pessimist."

She stuck her tongue out at him and left. He followed. Their drinks remained at the bar, paid for and untouched.

**___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________**

**Yes, I wrote the poem. If you hate it, don't be mad at Olivia. Be mad at me instead. Anyway, it's kinda wierd, but I sorta like it. I wrote the poem in geometry on Friday.**

**Please review!**

**--ally**


End file.
